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Every other week, MAKE’s awesome interns tell about the projects they’re building in the Make: Labs, the trouble they’ve gotten into, and what they’ll make next.

By Eric Chu, engineering intern

Building the Geared Candleholder by Benjamin Cowden in MAKE Volume 21 is one of my proudest builds, but it was no walk in the park. I wouldn’t say it’s the hardest project I’ve ever built, but it was definitely one that tested my patience. I think building the Geared Candleholder took me around 50 hours. It involved long days of filing, sanding, and sawing solid aluminum — mostly filing and sanding to make the gears, body, arms, and legs.

Making the gears and body were the toughest parts. Drilling the many holes that formed the gears’ teeth was easy — our drill press came to save the day for that. But then sawing and rounding all the gears out by hand took a lot of patience and time, and a bit of skill.

After cutting the rough outline of the 2 body pieces, all the curves were filed. To file the concave curves, a round file is a must. By this time, I yearned for a CNC mill so I could cut the parts out perfectly, but alas, I had no money for that, and it’s my job to build the projects the way the author built them, to make sure they work. After I made all the parts, I sanded them to give them that brushed-aluminum look.

The magic really happened when all the parts were assembled and I turned the knob for the first time. It worked! The gears clanked as they meshed together and pivoted the arms up and down. It definitely put a grin on my face!